Welcome to a new series here called The Roundup. It will focus on news, insights, and content from the week that are noteworthy. It’s similar to my series called Nuff Said, but The Roundup will be more timely/immediate, whereas Nuff Said is more reflective.

Here’s the Roundup for January 4-19

Jan 4: Why Are They Changing the COVID Narrative? – Tracy Beanz

After two straight years of the PCR test being used to dictate literally every aspect of normal life, Walensky was telling us they were unreliable.

“Walensky denied that the lack of a testing component had anything to do with supply issues involving rapid antigen tests in the U.S. “This really had nothing to do with supply. It had everything to do with knowing what we would do with the information when we got it,” Walensky said on “CBS Mornings.” Walensky said that PCR tests, which are more sensitive, would “not be viable” because they pick up traces of the virus for weeks. “So we would have people in isolation for a very long time if we were relying on PCRs,” Walensky told “Good Morning America.”

Why suddenly now were PCR tests “too sensitive” to be used to end a quarantine? Were they always too sensitive? Did something change?

Yes. Too many people are sick. They don’t want to know how many people are sick because it would completely shut down society under their old rules, and since they have gotten so many people injected, it would be readily apparent to anyone looking at case numbers that vaccines are useless against COVID.

Again, I predict that we will very soon see a rapid halt to counting cases at all.

See the last sentence above? Notice the headline below:

Jan 12: AP tells staff to ‘avoid emphasizing’ COVID case counts amid shift in covering pandemic – Fox News

The Associated Press is shifting in how it covers the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, no longer hyping the number of cases as the Omicron variant continues to infect both the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike.

“Hospitalization and death rates are considered by some to be a more reliable picture of COVID-19?s current impact on society. Yet even the usefulness of those numbers has been called into question in recent days,” the AP wrote, acknowledging hospitalization numbers include those who happen to test positive of COVID but are not hospitalized because of COVID.

Jan 8: The Mars Hill Podcast

Carolyn and I met the kids in Charlottesville for my birthday lunch. We got hooked on this podcast going and coming. The first six episodes are outstanding, disturbing and even sad. At the same time, the lessons learned from just the first six episodes for those in church leadership are many.

Jan 9: Omicron Makes Biden’s Vaccine Mandates Obsolete – Wall Street Journal, Luc Montagnier

Dr. Montagnier is a French virologist and recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus.

“…mandating a vaccine to stop the spread of a disease requires evidence that the vaccines will prevent infection or transmission (rather than efficacy against severe outcomes like hospitalization or death). As the World Health Organization puts it, “if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary to interrupt transmission chains and prevent harm to others, there should be sufficient evidence that the vaccine is efficacious in preventing serious infection and/or transmission.” For Omicron, there is as yet no such evidence.

The little data we have suggest the opposite. One preprint study found that after 30 days the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines no longer had any statistically significant positive effect against Omicron infection, and after 90 days, their effect went negative—i.e., vaccinated people were more susceptible to Omicron infection.

Meantime, it has long been known that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections are highly contagious, and preliminary data from all over the world indicate that this is true of Omicron as well. As CDC Director Rochelle Walensky put it last summer, the viral load in the noses and throats of vaccinated people infected with Delta is “indistinguishable” from that of unvaccinated people, and “what [the vaccines] can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”

If you can’t read the article because it requires a subscription to the WSJ, you can read it here.

Jan 12: The COVID Mania era highlights the shortcomings of democracy – Jordan Schachtel

Thanks to decades-long indoctrination campaigns in the Western world, so many of us have accepted, without question, the idea that a representative democracy is the preferred system to secure our freedoms. Yet when put to the test in the era of COVID Mania, democracy has catastrophically failed to secure anything for us but a completely unchecked ruling class that is more than happy to accommodate these one-person, one-vote delusions of empowerment. Meanwhile, the people in charge continue to elevate themselves to greater positions of authority and power.

The American founding fathers, in their incredible learned wisdom, often stressed the importance of “unalienable rights,” or a set of foundational rights that are impossible to rescind from human beings. Some of us arrive upon the security of these individual rights standards through a higher power, while others prefer their security through a standard of human reason.

What separates America today — or at least select pockets of the United States — from the rest of the Anglosphere (which includes United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) is this continuing commitment to individual rights, and their protection through our Second Amendment rights.

Democratically-elected officials have no mandate to take away our rights. We have much higher moral standards than democracy. We must continue to insist upon the protection of our unalienable, individual rights above all else.

Jan 13: Ep. 1683 If This Video Is Real, Then The End Is Near – The Dan Bongino Show

This was my first Bongino podcast to listen to, and it’s eye-opening. The video he references really is hard to believe – start at 55:13 if you just want to hear that part.

UK drops COVID-19 restrictions, scraps mandatory face masks

It’s sobering when even the Brits are freer than Americans…

“Face masks will no longer be mandatory in public places and schools in England and COVID-19 passports will be dropped in large parts of the country starting next Thursday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced in parliament on Wednesday.”